Student Ambassador Blog

American Occupational Therapy Association had its annual national conference in Nashville, TN last month, and it was a fantastic experience! Nashville is a very fun place—I also just happened to start listening to country the past year before this conference, so I was proud of knowing some songs that we heard from live musicians.

My classmates and I were able to present a Critically Appraised Topic (CAT) poster at the conference, and we have so many people to thank along the way! Dr. Myka Winder taught our Quantitative Research course and gave us a lot of guidance when we were preparing the content for our final presentation. Thanks to her push and also Dr. Natalie Leland and Dr. Ashley Halle’s help, we were able to submit an abstract and prepare a poster! It was a really wonderful opportunity for all of us to get involved in our professional network! If the opportunity comes up for you to go to the national conference (or even better, get a scholarship to cover for the trip), I would say TAKE IT! You get a great reward for a just some extra work in preparing for the conference. Getting involved in the professional affiliations early as a student is extremely valuable.

Also, if you might remember, a group of classmates and I spent our Leadership Externship trip in Korea. We got to meet our Korean OT friends and professors at AOTA! It was so nice to see them again! OTs may be spread out all over the world, but not even the Pacific Ocean can keep us apart for long! We are hoping to meet again at next year’s annual conference (in Chicago!).

There was a USC party too, and I got to meet alumni from years back! They were all super inspiring to talk to and to hear about their experiences! It was all a good time!

It was nearly two years since I’ve traveled internationally, and it sure felt great to use my passport again.

This trip was for our Leadership Capstone course for the Master’s in Occupational Therapy at USC; the purpose of this externship trip is to see the development of leadership and administration in areas related to OT! We had two weeks in March to complete our leadership externship. With six other fellow Trojan OTs, we traveled across the world to South Korea, thanks to the coordination of Global Initiatives at USC OT! Their Facebook page is here. We were hosted by the Department of Occupational Therapy at Yonsei University and they did a spectacular job at taking care of us. I am excited for their students to come visit the United States!

Here is a picture of our team. Check out the beautiful banner that they made for us!

Yonsei University’s mascot is an Eagle. The OT building is located in the most historical building on the Wonju campus.

Considering that my Korean vocabulary is limited to short phrases, I am grateful that our Korean OT colleagues worked hard to speak English with us. I am also incredibly grateful for our Korean-speaking classmates who have stepped up to the challenge of translating for us! This picture is of us 7 USC students with the Bachelor’s OT classes, after our presentations!

Korea’s culture is very different from Western American culture, and its impact on the Korean occupational therapy profession has been a regular theme in our conversations. We have been meeting with the OT graduate students and professors, and every single one of them is extremely passionate about pioneering occupational therapy in Korea. We got to learn about their research interests, how to translate western OT assessments so that they are relevant in an eastern cultural context, and how different policies affect practice. We also had the opportunity to visit different sites, including a community based mental health organization and a private pediatric clinic.

Here’s a picture of us with some of the Yonsei University OT Research Assistants. We met in their ADL (activities of daily living) room. One of these graduate students participated in USC OT Global Initiatives’s Summer Occupational Therapy Immersion program!

The wheelchairs include some designs by OT students! They also collaborated with engineering students to create these designs. I love the interdisciplinary collaboration.

We got to experience a lot of food and culture too!

The first full moon of the lunar new year is a huge festival! We got to experience some traditional Korean cultural activities!

There are simply too many stories and pictures to be shared! Overall, it was a wonderful visit. We all left feeling more connected with other OTs around the world—no matter what culture, our mission is the same! I think all of us are also a lot more culturally sensitive to the clients who we work with too!

One thing that I like to tell prospective students about is the various ways to get involved as a graduate student. One way is the USC Graduate Student Government, which puts on various events for graduate students on both the University Park Campus and the Health Science Campus.

There are lots of events that happen, including professional networking events, book clubs, happy hour gatherings, and discounted tickets to events in Los Angeles!

The most recent event that I went to that was sponsored by the Graduate Student Government was to listen to the LA Philharmonic at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. I really enjoyed it!
I haven’t listened to classical music in a really long time, and it was a wonderful way to spend a weekend evening.

This was the flyer that caught my attention!

We had seats that faced the conductor, which made our experience really interesting! I have never been able to see the face of the conductor before, and it was pretty inspiring to see how he was so immersed into the music. I found myself completely immersed in the performance and watching the conductor and all the talented musicians play. It actually reminded me about flow, a theory developed by the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi that comes up in our occupational therapy discussions. The concept of flow discusses the full immersion of a person in an activity which the skill and the challenge is balanced; it often results in a different experience of time. I felt like the three hour concert flew by so quickly!

In our qualitative research class last year, my group and I conducted a mini research project on the experience of performance anxiety in musicians, specifically the contrast between solo instrumentalists versus orchestra members. I was reminded of our research and interviews with musicians as we listened to the performance as well. There were trumpet and horn solos in two symphonies, in which the entire orchestra stops playing and everyone listens to the really complex solo. I almost stopped breathing because part of me was scared of the soloist messing up. The solos were absolutely brilliant and I shouldn’t have worried at all. It was interesting that during this classical music performance, I realized that we had explored so many different topics in our program!

Today I want to share with you about my experience with the USC Student Run Clinic. The Student Run Clinic is a really unique organization that I would recommend students to get involved in! As an interdisciplinary care team, students from USC’s schools of medicine, pharmacy, occupational therapy, and physician assistant work together to provide comprehensive health care to the underserved in Los Angeles.

This past weekend was the first time that I volunteered with SRC. I loved meeting other students and learning about how each of our professions contribute to the patient’s care. It was a busy clinic weekend, so I was able to work with four patients. It was very interesting meeting a variety of patients of different ages and backgrounds! One challenge that I faced was the Spanish speaking language barrier; I learned that language is a crucial part of the communication with the patient. Because I am not the most fluent Spanish speaker (whoohoo high school Spanish), I felt like there were many things that I wanted to offer her as an occupational therapy student, but couldn’t convey it properly to her.

On the other hand, it was extremely meaningful to see how the role of the occupational therapist is so client centered and that we are able to meet the patient as an individual person. When working with the patient diagnosed with depression, the other members of the team did a really great job at gathering her medical history. In the team huddles, I was able to bring a holistic perspective to her life and tie in the medical considerations to her participation in activities. However, I had the opportunity to get to know her and provide a safe space for her to really share what she was struggling with in her life. I was struck by how important it is to build trust with the patient and I felt honored that let me hear the full story about her experience.

Together, we explored all the things that troubled her, including the environment in her neighborhood, her relationships with family members, and challenges in her daily routine. As occupational therapists, we are also concerned about the emotional, psychological, and spiritual health of our patients. It turned out that spirituality was something that mattered a lot to this patient. With my facilitation and encouragement, she personally set a goal to engage in more spiritual reading to help calm her thoughts throughout the day. She left our session feeling empowered and motivated.

Third semester of the Master’s program.. check! Only one more semester to go before commencement!

The first three semesters of the Entry-Level Master’s program focus on three different immersions: mental health, pediatrics, and adult physical rehabilitation. Our entire Master’s class rotated through these immersions in smaller groups, called cohorts (A, B, C).

This semester was our last rotation—adult rehabilitation (as you may have gathered from my previous posts). Last Friday, our last final also meant that it was our last time as a cohort. SEPARATION ANXIETIES.

Coming in as a Bachelor’s-to-Master’s student, I met everyone in the fall semester. I learned so much from everyone in my cohort and loved working with each person! Our cohort Facebook group included SOAP note samples, cute baby videos, and much more! From potlucks to group google docs, these people are seriously the best.